Awake
31 Dec 2023Kasumi Goto
Koleti systemRescue Ship Cavell
November 24, 3309
Several armed guards stood near with their weapons drawn and pointed at the Thargoid life support pod, which hummed and periodically flashed, held within a sealed section of the megaship, its occupant hidden behind an opaque material that somewhat resembled milky glass. One of them nodded toward two others, ready to breach it.
"Get it open."
The two soldiers in question moved ahead and began to pry the capsule open. A medical team stood further behind them, just in case the occupant woke up earlier than anticipated, and was hostile - though their order was to use non-lethal force unless otherwise necessary. Soon, the pod opened, and the two guards that had done so reached inside, into the amniotic fluid, as they'd done prior many times already, removing the life support tubing and carefully extracting the person inside, laying them down on the floor, ensuring they remained still in the zero G environment, while the other four kept their weapons pointed at them without pause. The medical team moved forward, but stopped when one of the soldiers raised a fist.
"Is it her?"
The figure that had just been removed was a young, thin woman with some light Japanese features and a distinct scar on the right cheek marking her face, and one across the top of the neck, black hair swept to her right across the forehead, in a black Artemis suit. Surrounded by globs of the fluid freely floating around, and still wet from it herself.
Her eyes were closed, and the chest movement from her breathing was almost imperceptible. An ID scan of the suit, reset to default by an AI hardly anybody knew existed moments before the abduction, confirmed the visual appearance, and another soldier nodded to answer the question of the first.
"Inform the professor. She'll want to know they got her back. Medical team, take her to the medical bay near one of the quarantine chambers and examine her thoroughly. Escort, four of you go with them. We don't want to take any chances."
The medical team lifted her up, and secured her on a stretcher, a more convenient and dignified way of carrying her, before moving off. Four escorts followed them, operating like a part of a well-oiled machine, which continued to operate behind them to free more people from the pods the Thargoids held them captive in.
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Eight days later...
December 2, 3309
Alba looked at my - effectively - motionless body, tied to a medical bed and dressed in a basic medical gown, eyeing it somewhat skeptically. A few guards were always present, but currently had their weapons lowered.
"She's been in this state for a week? No signs of life?", Alba asked, remaining focused on my face.
"Nothing other than breathing, no.", one of the doctors replied, pointing at a monitor displaying brain activity, heart rate, and other vitals, all of which remained low. "She's been in this coma ever since we opened her pod, with nothing more than basic impulses assuring vital reflexes."
"What about her implant?"
"We're unsure. What examinations we dared to run on it indicate it sustained some minor damage during her struggle, though it has repaired itself by now. Yet it remains in a state of hibernation, and hasn't done anything to repair the damage to her brain, or the link that it has to it."
Alba sighed and shook her head slowly, holding a hand to it, the other underneath the elbow.
"Has anything else changed since your initial report from a week ago?"
"Nothing particularly significant, still the same errant signals that occasionally reach one of the secondary implants on her various organs, or pulse throughout the brain, seemingly going nowhere. No signs of any pathogens or further genetic alteration. Except for one thing ..."
The doctor pulled up a most recent scan of my body's internals, centering it around the region where the liver is located.
"I can't say if our instruments simply didn't register its presence during prior scans, or it formed overnight - I believe the former more than the latter, and it may just have been too small to detect easily until now - but there appears to be a small organ attached to the liver, which isn't present in any of the other captives that were rescued, nor is it part of standard human biology. But it is clearly formed of a mixture of her altered DNA and Thargoid biomechanical tissue. The same one present throughout the remainder of her body."
"And what is its purpose?"
"We don't know ..." The doctor pulled the graph to zoom it back out and highlighted the circulatory system. "All it appears to be is connected to the circulatory system through the liver. It may be some type of regulatory gland, perhaps, but to what end it exists is impossible to tell. It has remained inactive since we discovered it, and analyzed some of its tissue. We might only find out when she wakes up, if she does."
Alba breathed out and looked down with her eyes closed, hands placed flat on the hips, for a few seconds.
"... just keep me updated on any changes to her condition. I have to head back to Duamta now and prepare a press release informing people we have her back. No mention of this... organ, until we know more."
"Understood, professor. You'll be the first to know it if she's awake, or anything else major happens."
Alba nodded and walked out of the med bay where I was kept, by myself, relatively close to an empty quarantine chamber. And I was no more aware of anything around me than I was during the entire preceding week.
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Another week passed with no developments to my state, neither regarding the newly formed biomechanical organ, nor the mess within my brain. The medical staff working on my case were starting to question whether anything would occur when, at one point during a night shift, a small blip on a monitor, accompanied by an audio cue, caught the attention of the attending doctor, who was almost startled by it in the sometimes disquieting silence of the room.
"Damn machine ...", she grumbled to herself while getting up from a chair, and looking at a practically flat line. "Nothing. Like I thought."
The woman turned around, only for that same blip to repeat itself right then.
"Now you're just playing with me."
She observed the vital monitor for more than a few seconds, and that time, two blips occurred within a shorter period, as though my heart was beginning to beat faster, returning to a normal rate. Mirroring this, brain activity seemed to suddenly rise.
"I'll be damned ...", she murmured, double checked another readout to be sure, and turned to the guards. "Something might be happening. Be ready, just in case."
The female doctor called in a few of her colleagues, to have them on standby in case there was any kind of emergency with me that didn't require armed intervention.
"What is it?", one of the other doctors walking in asked, rubbing his sleepy eyes. "My shift was about to end."
"Stop complaining about the lack of coffee this week and look.", the woman replied to him, pointing at the monitors displaying heart and brain activity. "Something's happening with her. I think her implant's started out sending signals again."
Pointing at the vital monitor of my brain activity, she highlighted the, yet still slow, but increasingly frequent signs of activity beyond simply assuring the most basic vital functions.
"How long do you think this'll take? What if it's nothing?", another of the doctors asked.
"No idea, but it's better to be sure about it. If she wakes up, it'll be good to run some short observations about her basic responses. And if her heart is about to give out, I'm not planning to be in here as the only qualified individual."
------
Something had changed. I had been like a flicker floating in a void, not thinking, not remembering, just... existing. Waiting to fade away, or do something. To light a fire.
Now, I could hear something. A voice, calling. Distant, echoing, faint...
I moved toward it.
The medical staff in the med bay were too distracted to notice the sudden, light movement of eyelids, instead focused on vital readouts increasing. My heart began to beat faster, and breathing rhythm as well as intensity increased slightly.
I was disoriented. The voice seemed to be coming from... directly ahead, yet it was not. Wherever I turned, there was still only darkness. But it was clearer now, and I heard a word.
... wake ...
My eyelids opened... for a second, barely cutting through the darkness. But everything was blurry, and I barely felt... my body. They felt heavy, causing my eyes to fall shut again. One of the doctors looked... but too late to see.
A strange... glow, was catching my attention. A pulsing light, in the distance. My flicker moved toward it.
It was a flicker like... me. But more intense. It was what called. It pulsed more intensely, and held me near it, preventing escape. It said...
Wake up.
The darkness faded away.
My eyelids... flickered, somewhat, their muscles reactivating properly as my consciousness returned... somewhat. Slowly blinking, trying to clear up the vision, more from a subconscious impulse than directly aware. And there were muffled sounds around me.
"She's waking up!"
"Should we be in here with her?"
"Only one of you eggheads stay near her. The rest back off a little."
My vision cleared up, and I could keep my eyes open... a little bit more. But sound disappeared. I could see... people, around me. Moving away, except one, but didn't register the presence of any of them. I was laid down on something. Tried to sit upright. Arms got stuck, so I lay back down. Beginning to feel more in my body, I partly realized I wore something strange over my body, not a suit or usual clothing. But I couldn't find the word for it, or how it felt.
I tested the response in my right hand first, feeling like... I had been placed in a body without knowing it. Balled it into a fist, rolled it along with the arm. Repeated the same with the left. Then gently pulled them out of a kind of restraint, only designed to immediately stop floating away, or maybe too... loose. And sat upright, feeling tighter resistance somewhere just below the hips, from a strap, and an odd sting in the waist area.
I began to stare ahead without really paying attention to, or noticing, any of the people nearby. Not even the guards that, out of precaution, had their weapons raised. It took a hand waved in my face for my eyes to respond and track the movement of it, and the person that stepped in front of me. A woman like me. She opened her mouth, but no sound reached me. I followed her movements in curious manner, but felt very little at it, or the partly concerned, partly happy looks of the other people around, then suddenly felt very tired again. The feeling came... from somewhere at the back of my head.
So I leaned back, crossed my arms over my chest, just under the natural curve, and closed my eyes again.
------
The following day ...
[December 10, 3309]
I woke up again without much of a problem. Finding myself in... some other room. More spacious, with a proper bed and a light feeling of gravity. But somehow, I didn't... quite feel at ease. Remaining in a laid position, not quite tired, but not awake either yet, I allowed myself to take in my surroundings more. Sound began to enter my ears. Voices, a distant, deep hum. A memory was present, associated to it. Engines. Space.
I sat upright, still dressed in the strange... gown. It was called a gown. I couldn't quite tell where the memory originated from, but it was there. Discarding the bed sheets from me, I investigated the 'gown'. It went down to... somewhere around the legs, but nothing underneath. I didn't like it. Pulling it up further, I noticed the cause of the sting on my waist. There was an incision mark. Something had cut in, there.
Suddenly, a kind of 'switch' flicked in my brain, and almost all thoughts left it. I pulled my legs closer to the chest, wrapping my arms around them, and looked ahead in a random direction, getting stuck in almost a frozen state. It lasted even when the door opened, which I somewhat subconsciously registered, until a person stepped in front of me and made enough gestures to break me out of it. I followed the movements with the same neutral, semi-interested gaze.
"Ah. Good. So you can still react.", the person, dressed in nearly all white clothes, said. A doctor, a memory in my head said. Possibly the same as the last day. "Can you hear me?"
There was an instinct to open my mouth. Which it did, but then... I couldn't produce any sound with it, and my brain seemed to seize up, as if the signal had nowhere to go. I closed it again and simply nodded lightly. The doctor took some notes on a device while speaking to herself.
"Hm... can listen now, but still needs some stronger stimuli to react and start paying attention. No speech capability yet."
I'd begun to look around while she was doing that, vaguely noticing the armed guard. There was only the briefest hint of an emotion to the sight, something about needing to be wary or careful, but there was no real processing power available for this feeling to really manifest and create the appropriate response.
"Hey, look this way again please."
My head turned back to the voice, almost instinctively. The doctor held a funny, rotund stick with a larger end point in the hand, which my eyes focused on, then it emitted some light. A flashlight.
"Please follow the light." The hand moved left. My eyes followed first, then my head turned too. "Good. Now right." The light moved from left to right. I followed. The light moved two more times, always back to the center, then to top, then to bottom. The next moment, it was held out.
"Please take it and turn it off."
I did as instructed. My right hand reached out and firmly grabbed the handle. Taking it into the left as well. Examining it, and finding a round bump, which upon testing, turned it off. Then I pointed it at my right eye and turned it on, which made me flinch and drop it as I was blinded. Luckily, in the near-absence of gravity, the doctor had plenty of time to grab it.
"Basic motor functions work. Seems to display some child-like curiosity. Also very sensitive to light, but that's already known medical data ..."
The doctor noticed me fumbling with the gown, and kind of trying to point at the incision mark, after which I looked at her again, with somewhat of an inquiring expression.
"Oh... that. We had to open a cut there to look at something inside your body. Don't worry, it's all safe."
'Safe'... I couldn't do anything with the word. Either the associated emotion was absent, or unable to be processed. I resumed staring ahead blankly for a moment while the - figurative - knot resolved itself.
"Hm... some words seem to cause her to lock up. Lack of emotional processing or expression, maybe. Should ask one of the psychologists if they can help me figure it out."
I looked at the doctor again while pointing at my closed mouth, drawing a cross in front of it, then a "question mark". The best way I could ask 'Why can't I speak'.
The woman opposite of me sighed.
"It's... difficult."
I leaned my head to the right slightly, otherwise not changing the pose with my arms wrapped around my legs, expressing curiosity. A basic trait that seemed to have remained despite what I'd gone through, which itself I couldn't remember.
"So, something bad happened to you, and your brain got badly damaged during it. You only woke up a day ago if you remember, and there are a lot of parts not working. It will take a long time to make sure they do, and you will be able to do more as time passes. Tests like this might help, and - "
My brain kind of 'shut off' at the flow of incoming information, making me become unresponsive with a vacant stare again, this time more hopelessly than before. It simply couldn't handle even slightly larger, somewhat simplified explanations, and I remained oblivious to the doctor's attempts to break my - figurative - brain freeze.
"And gets overwhelmed by information easily. Keep in mind for future tests. Going to give her a break now. Hopefully, memory and cognitive abilities will improve soon, in two or three days."
My eyes did follow the woman's movements now, as she walked away. Noting that there were two doors, one which closed as she went inside, and the other that was already closed when she did so. Then I lay back and closed my eyes, quickly falling asleep again when the information knot went away. Little of it had stayed in my mind, but enough did to make memory patterns for creating new ones start to form again, slowly.
For now, however, rest had priority again, or so that strange, friendly presence at the back of my head said.